Israel’s spirits on historic mission

By Jason Keyser, Jerusalem

For a few hours, Ilan Ramon, a 48-year-old air force colonel, pushed Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and a tedious election campaign off the front pages.

Yesterday’s tabloids published photos of Ramon in a bulky orange space suit with an Israeli flag sewn onto the shoulder beside a NASA patch. Headlines read, “A giant step for Israel” and “To touch the sky”.

Israel’s three TV stations broadcast live from Cape Canaveral, with an unofficial countdown clock ticking on screens even during regular broadcasting. “It’s a distraction from the feeling that this country is in really bad shape, the feeling of desperation, of helplessness, confusion, anger and fear,” said author Tom Segev.

Some believed the hubbub, similar to the hype after Israelis win international soccer matches, was exaggerated.

“We are not succeeding in preventing Palestinian teenagers from blowing us up with bombs, but we have our first Hebrew astronaut since Elijah the Prophet ascended in a storm heavenwards,” wrote Yaron London in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper.

“Then again, what’s wrong with a bit of joy?” he added.

Some of the enthusiasm likely comes from the fact that Israel’s first astronaut is one of the country’s top air force pilots, considered among the nation’s military and professional elite. There’s even a popular new TV drama about the air force called “Wings”.

Ramon has logged thousands of hours of flight time and was part of the first Israeli squad to pilot American-made F-16 fighter jets in 1980. He fought in the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and in the 1982 war in Lebanon.

Ramon has been preparing since 1997 to join a space shuttle crew as a payload specialist. He is to spend much of the 16-day space shuttle flight aiming cameras in an Israel Space Agency experiment to study how desert dust and other contaminants in the atmosphere affect rainfall and temperature.